Google Ads: From Generating Leads to Driving Conversions

3 September 2020

Marketing tools such as Google Ads and keywords are the lifeblood of digital marketing and form a huge part of digital marketing strategies. As a digital agency in Melbourne – we feel it’s beneficial for you to have a general understanding of how these marketing elements work. Read on to discover all there is to know regarding Google Ads, keywords and how to best take advantage of them.

 

Defining the terms

For starters, you should know what these terms mean. Keywords are fairly self-explanatory. They’re particular words or strings of words that represent the services your business offers. Tailoring keywords towards a target audience is essential to yielding good results. SEO is heavily centred around keywords and is an organic method of getting your business out there and generating new leads.

Google Ads, on the other hand, is a tool that lets you create paid advertisements that sit at the top of a Google search for relevant keywords. Where your Google Ad sits is determined by the quality of the ad as well as how much you’re willing to bid on it. The ultimate goal of both of these elements is to generate new leads for your business. Directing traffic through to your site using these methods is the first step to achieving conversions.

 

Choosing keywords

When creating and shaping keywords to best generate leads and conversions it’s essential to align them with your business goals as well as look at the target audience. You have to step into their shoes and imagine what they’d be searching for.

 

Don’t be broad

Your keywords should aim at small, specific groups instead of large, general ones. Sure, the broader searches (such as electrician in Melbourne) might have a larger pool of searches, but it’s also a lot more competitive and will be harder to break into. Another example of this would be simply putting up electrician as a keyword. Again, it’s too broad. That particular search receives around 27,100 hits a month in Australia. It doesn’t specify where your business operates or the type of electrical work you do (commercial, residential etc.).

 

Narrow it down

Bringing it down a notch to a suburb – like electrician in South Yarra, for example – will give you a more efficient pool of traffic to draw from in the long run – especially when combining other neighbouring suburbs as well. Target locations are great for solidifying your Google ranking and bringing in traffic for conversions. You may also target particular services you offer like, for example, AV home setup or air conditioning installation. The more specific and pointed the keyword is, the better the chance of driving traffic towards your site.

 

Less is more

Sometimes, especially if you’re sticking to a strict budget, less is more when it comes to keywords. Selecting a handful of solid, targeted ones that you can optimise efficiently will be more beneficial for your SEO strategy than managing 20+ keywords that cover all avenues imaginable but may not be able to be maintained as well. It’s a simple matter of quality over quantity.

 

Optimising keywords and ad campaigns

Optimising for your keywords and Google Ads is an ongoing task that will never stop. There is always something more you can do – whether you’ve come up with a new idea for a strategy or need to update obsolete content/information. You should always be testing new ad strategies and testing them against your current ones to see how the performance varies. Because Google’s search algorithm is constantly being updated – it’s also important that you or your digital agency stay up to date with the latest news to make adjustments when necessary (in addition to regular updates).

 

Improving landing pages

Landing pages are where your incoming traffic will be directed to when they click on one of your Google results. Whilst your site’s homepage can be a landing page – it is not the only landing page. A page that deals with a specific service could be a landing page, for example. If you’re a business that services multiple suburbs, then creating a landing page for each of those suburbs and the corresponding keywords is vital to yielding the best organic SEO result.

Some of the practices that can enhance a landing page include:

    • Writing relevant and high-quality content for the page that features the keyword a handful of times throughout and keeping the information up to date periodically – bolstering its SEO value;
    • Efficient backlinking practices that use the appropriate and relevant anchor text;
    • Formatting the page so there’s a clear information hierarchy and it’s easy to consume for users;
    • Ensuring the title tags, meta descriptions and meta tags are relevant to the page and include the keyword; and
    • Featuring the keywords in the images’ title and alt attribute.

The other side of the coin is ensuring your landing pages are attractive to users and entice enough to convert them. All information and content must not only be easy to read but also easy to find – minimising the number of clicks needed to take the user to their destination. The three-click rule is a good example of this where from a homepage – the user shouldn’t have to click more than three times to find what they need.

 

Negative keywords

Negative keywords sit on a banned list, so-to-speak. They’re specific search terms that you can choose to actively exclude from your Google Ads campaign. For example, if your company does fencing for homes, you don’t want your searches coming up for fencing the sport. So, some negative keywords would be fencing lessons or fencing gear, for example. Negative keywords work in conjunction with broad matching.

 

Keyword matching

To ensure your Google Ads show up for the right audience you need to control how narrow or wide the keyword matching is.

    • Broad matching is the default matching type and will include search queries with spelling mistakes, synonyms and related variations. It’s designed to deliver your ad to the widest possible audience.
    • Phrase matching means your ad will show up for searches that match or closely match, a phrase that features the keyword – even if there are added words to the beginning and/or end of the phrase.
    • Exact matching will only direct your ad towards search queries that match your keyword exactly with only slight room for deviation in regard to closely matched synonyms. Ideal for targeting specific audiences.

 

Are you looking for a digital agency in Melbourne?

AWD Digital is a full-suite digital agency based in Melbourne that can help you with all your digital dilemmas. Whether it’s creating a custom website, forming an effective SEO strategy or crafting and managing Google Ads – our experts have got you covered. Interested in seeing some of our work in action? Take a look out our past projects to get a better idea of the calibre of work we produce.

If you’d like to know more about what we do or are interested in enlisting our services, then please don’t hesitate to contact us by filling out the form on our website or by calling 03 9001 6255.